Freeware tools

With the Login Consultants Virtual Desktop Estimator making calculations of your VDI or SBC environment will be a lot easier. By using this calculator, there can be decided which amount of VDI or RDS machines on one single Hypervisor can be hosted. Or, during the initialization of a project, choices can be made on what hardware needs to be purchased.

Do note that this tool gives an estimation. This estimation is based on Login Consultants' experience with Performance Scans, but it does not guarantee that this estimation is the correct configuration of one's environment.

Most business environment have a (somewhat) restricted workspace. The IT department is always discussing the need of the Windows Task manager for end-users. This is because the Windows Task Manager is unmanageable and gives away a whole lot of information about performance, services, processes and possibly the name of other logged on users on that machine. All kinds of information not necessary for an end user to know. For that reasons the IT department frequently prevents the use of the Windows Task Manager. This also prevents a user to close an application that is not responsive anymore.

The Simple Task Manager gives back that functionality to the user without all the noise and showing unnecessary/unwanted information. A user gets an overview of their application windows with the possibility to put the application in front of all the other applications or simply end the task. This will prevent the need for a user to call the servicedesk to simply close a stuck application.

Every time you build you’re base Image from scratch or update it, you must seal it before deploying it to your cloned devices. No matter if you are using Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop with Machine Creation Services (MCS) or Provisioning Services (PVS), VMware View or Microsoft only, BIS-F supports it all. Optimize you’re base Image before deployment, deletes unique identifier to prevent duplicate/ghost entries on your management server (Anti-Virus, SCCM, SCOM, etc.…), delete junk files, defrag you’re disk etc. All these necessary steps and much more has to be run manually, but here is a better way. Here’s the right tool for the job.

Base Image Script Framework (BIS-F) is 100% PowerShell driven and addresses tons of optimizations plus it has a great logging feature.

Please read the Admin Guide in the Download package to get further information.

How many support tickets would you be able to solve immediately if you could simply 'see' what your users are seeing? How much time would you save by not having to turn to third line support? How much sooner would your users be able to resume their work? With the rise of the Microsoft Remote Desktop Services platform as a powerful but cost-effective desktop virtualization platform, we see a growing need for helpdesk employees to view sessions on the Microsoft RDS platform.

However, the Microsoft tooling that comes with the platform requires helpdesk employees to have administrative permissions. With the Login "RDS Helpdesk Console" for Windows Server 2012 you can help your users much faster, prevent tickets from escalating directly to second or third line support and meet your service level agreements more easily.

The Login App-V Client Diagnostic and Configuration tool v2 (ACDC) is an easy to use front-end to the Microsoft Application Virtualization version 5 client. It provides end users and administrators an intuitive access to a variety of App-V 5 client tasks, like launching, repairing or debugging virtual applications, identifying the overall state of packages or modifying essential client configuration settings.

With Login App-V Client Diagnostic and Configuration tool, you can:

Get an overview of application and package information in one single window by merging cmdlets output, registry and file information.

Launch applications from a graphical user interface

Launch predefined commands within the virtual environment of each application.

Diagnose problems with App-V applications by launching tools and commands into the virtual environment.

Configure settings that are not visible in the App-V Client GUI, such as “Predictive Streaming”, “Allow Stream from File”, “Max Package Age” and many more.

Give an overview of application and package information by merging important WMI, registry and OSD information in one single window.

ACDC can be run both as an Administrator and as a Limited User. Running as a limited user will limit the functionality of the tool due to the fact that it has less permission on the system.

New features of ACDC 1.1 include:

Support for Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.6

Support for 32bit and 64bit Operating Systems

Automatic application refresh (first tab) is optional. When ACDC was run on machines which have a lot of applications available (100+) there was some loss in user experience. The automatic loading (and refreshing) of applications in the Application tab is made optional for this scenario

Copy to clipboard in Application or Package detail pane now also supports only copying the value instead of entire line

Application icons are displayed both in the applications tab as well as in the tray icon

The Cache tab has a refresh option

Double clicking a log item opens sftlog.txt

In some scenarios when an OSD file was edited locally, ACDC would keep the local OSD file locked after saving and closing the file. This would publishing refresh

Some stats (using Acrobat Reader 8.x on a laptop) The differences between a virtual desktop in a datacenter and a physical desktop machine on your desk run much deeper than the mere difference in location and underlying hardware technology. Ordinary and seemingly innocent actions like mass-mailing a simple PDF to everyone in your organization can bring your virtual desktop environment to its knees. Enter the PDF from Hell by Jeroen van de Kamp. Mail this puppy to your end-users and watch how your performance degrades.

Memory a couple of seconds after opening the doc: 80MB

Memory after browsing extensively: 150MB

Memory after printing : 216 MB

CPU 100% for a couple of seconds while browsing to the next page

Starting a Printjob: 100% CPU for about 2 minutes

Printjob spoolfile size: a whopping 741MB!!

The question is not how to protect yourself from PDF’s like this, how would you handle such an unexpected behavior in your environment?